There may have been a time when it was enough to swap the language on your site, add a currency and a local flag in the corner to call yourself international. Well, not anymore. With AI-driven translation and localization tools, pretty much any site can look international in minutes. The surface is no longer a differentiator. It's bare minimum.
The term "alternative payment methods" comes from a world where cards and cash were the default, and everything else got filed under "other alternatives". But over the past several years, local payment methods have gained ground market after market, quietly turning the rankings upside down. Today, they dominate e-commerce in several of the world's largest markets. What was once niche is now simply how people expect to pay. It's no longer an option. It's a clear dealbreaker.
It sounds obvious once you say it out loud. Yet plenty of merchants still treat payment methods as a technical detail to sort out later, rather than one of the most important decisions in the expansion strategy. Something customers simply expect these days.
Across several of Europe's largest markets, bank-based payments and digital wallets are now the default, rather than cards. In Germany, France, and Belgium, paying directly from a banking app is the fastest-growing checkout trend, and it's exactly why Wero has become a first choice for millions of shoppers there in a short time. The same pattern shows up across Europe. For example, most online purchases in the Netherlands run through iDEAL, Blik dominates in Poland, and Vipps does the same in Norway. And so on.
Every market has its own pattern, and those patterns differ radically. What works in Finland won't automatically work in Spain, and what works in Italy probably won't work in Brazil. Expanding internationally without accounting for that is like opening a store in a new country and then refusing to accept the local currency.
To make it clear. This isn't just a theory, because it shows up directly in conversion. Research from PPRO, our partner and one of the companies working most closely with local payment methods globally, shows that checkout conversion can drop by up to 10% when a customer's preferred payment method isn't available. This isn't new for us. Conversion has been the focus of Qliro Checkout since the start, and local payment methods are simply the latest way to deliver on it.
On top of that, a payment method your customer already recognizes also tends to reduce fraud and chargebacks, particularly with bank transfers, where funds move directly between verified accounts. So this isn't only about more completed purchases. It's about safer ones too.
We've built our own expansion around exactly this logic. Last spring, we launched Qliro Checkout Gen 4, a checkout designed so merchants can enter new markets without rebuilding it from scratch each time. One integration, one agreement, one payout.
That foundation is what made it possible to launch Wero for our merchants this summer, opening the door for shoppers in Germany, France, and Belgium to pay directly from their banking app, as they already do. It already reaches 80% of banked consumers across those three markets. And this is just the start. More local payment methods and more markets are rolling out through the autumn, guided by where merchant demand actually shows up.
As Evelin Kaup, our Deputy CEO and Chief of Staff, put it in an interview with Ehandel.se.
"We're building on our strength in the Nordics, while creating the capacity for our merchants to grow into new markets. We're both a Nordic growth partner and a partner that helps our merchants navigate new markets and meet their customers with the right local payment experience."
Going internationally will always involve language, pricing, and marketing. But the real bottleneck rarely lives there anymore. It lives at checkout, in the exact moment a customer decides to complete the purchase or leave the site.
We're continuing to roll out more local payment methods across more markets this autumn, so the dealbreaker works in your favor.
👉 Curious what that could look like for your own expansion?
Read more about our global expansion or get in touch.